NOTE: The following post was texted to me while I was on the air on Thursday evening – and was in response to the subject matter at hand. Hold on to your hats Americans – we are in for some rough times ahead! ~ Editor

The national debt has taken on a life of its own, and largely due to its entitlement programs and the massive unfunded debt outside of the Congressional oversight and our endeavors to maintain our empire by growing expenditures through the Dept of Defense.

Our creditors will loan money so long as they view investment in the U.S. as a good risk. As our interest paid on the national debt remains above a trillion dollars or more and our spending amounts to 120% of our GDP, America grows closer and closer to a full blown economic collapse, especially if foreign nations stop loaning us money, making the Treasury resort to massive printing of currency measures that will drive the sort of inflation growth that collapsed the Weimar Republic just prior to WW II.

America’s systemic and financial collapse isn’t a matter of if but when. And when it occurs, itv will naturally facilitate an authoritarian dictatorial form of government in America.

We are in deep trouble, because Congress, neither Democrats or Republicans, are willing to halt spending, since it enables and supports their own power base, and there isn’t any leader coming to the rescue, because our people have become too corrupt – always demanding bigger government and more free stuff from said government/

Americans had better hold onto their collective asses, because they’re in for one helluva ride.

Things don’t change because our people and our government have grown immoral and corrupt beyond belief.

And just because an empire may survive for a somewhat lengthy span of time, doesn’t mean that a righteous or benevolent form of governance survives with it. We have watched as our republic changed from being fairly free in nature before 1900 to becoming extremely controlling and very near tyrannical today, never more in evidence than during the Biden regime. And under Trump, even though the insurgence act is constitutional, the Democrat Party communists are pushing so hard to destroy this republic that the Trump administration is being left little to no choice but to govern in a more authoritarian manner or simply give in and allow the nation’s communists to succeed in further transforming America away from a free and sovereign nation as they also act to completely suppress our Bill of Rights – and here too we face troubles with President Trump’s own refusal to properly defend and protect our rights, especially if one considers eminent domain, the second and fourth amendments which Trump has proven to have little or no respect or inclination to fully protect.

What’s changed? Doesn’t seem a damned thing’s changed, does it? No matter who gets elected.

Much of this goes back to the changes made to the U.S. Constitution during and after the Wilson presidency, as recall of senators was abolished, the Federal Reserve Bank and the IRS were created and the U.S. dropped the gold standard for the U.S. dollar.

Fiat money made it possible to grow American empire to an obscene, monstrous degree and undertake any and every war it chose or pursue any and all agendas that found its fancy, as power shifted between the parties and people trying to help America and those trying to destroy Her, over and over – every Congressman on both sides of the political aisle playing the grift, entering the legislative chambers poor as church mice and leaving at the end of their tenures as millionaires and billionaires.

The Modern Monetary Theory has set the nation’s ultimate destruction in motion.

Some imagine that replacing one leader with another will resolve the problem. This is a comforting fantasy. A culture that has abandoned self-governance cannot be rescued by strong personalities. Indeed, such figures often accelerate the decay by concentrating power in the name of efficiency.

What liberty requires is not saviors, but limits.

The great error of modern political thought is the belief that structures alone preserve freedom. They do not.

Paper constitutions collapse when the people who inhabit them no longer believe in restraint. Rights survive only when citizens accept responsibilities. Remove the latter and the former becomes a slogan.

The shift toward fiat money and permanent bureaucratic management removed the natural brakes on political ambition. Once currency was severed from material reality, governments gained the power to simulate prosperity while quietly undermining it. Wars became easier to fund. Programs became easier to expand. Accountability became easier to avoid.

Modern Monetary Theory merely gives intellectual respectability to this old temptation. It whispers that debt is imaginary, that limits are outdated, that consequences can be postponed indefinitely. It is the serpent’s promise translated into economics: “You shall not surely pay.”

But reality is stubborn. Debts must be honored, inflated away, or defaulted upon. Each path carries suffering. The question is not whether pain will come, but whether it will arrive with liberty intact.

History teaches that economic collapse almost always precedes political centralization. When systems strain, rulers tighten control. When chaos grows, authority expands. When trust collapses, force replaces consent.

And here we arrive at the final tragedy: the loss of moral seriousness. A society that mocks virtue, treats discipline as oppression, and confuses indulgence with freedom cannot long remain free. It may keep its ceremonies and symbols. It may continue to vote. But it will increasingly be governed by administrators rather than citizens.

The choice before America is therefore not technical but ethical. It is not about budgets alone but about what kind of people we intend to be. Will we continue borrowing against our children while congratulating ourselves on compassion? Will we continue feeding the machinery of dependency while calling it justice? Or will we recover the uncomfortable virtues that once sustained republican government: restraint, thrift, responsibility, and courage?

Empires can endure for centuries. Liberty rarely does.

If we persist in sacrificing prudence for pleasure and discipline for convenience, we will not need tyrants to conquer us.

We will build the cage ourselves – and call it security.

January 16, 2026

~ the Author ~
Justin O. Smith Has Lived in Tennessee Off and on Most of His Adult Life, and Graduated From Middle Tennessee State University in 1980, With a B.S. And a Double Major in International Relations and Cultural Geography – Minors in Military Science and English, for What Its Worth. His Real Education Started From That Point on. Smith Is a Frequent Contributor to the Family of Kettle Moraine Publications.